


you made plans and i made problems

by warsfeil



Series: 'cause i could never hold a perfect thing and not demolish it [1]
Category: Fruits Basket
Genre: Discussion of kink, F/M, Post-Canon, Self-Worth Issues, discussion of trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:20:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27185788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warsfeil/pseuds/warsfeil
Summary: “You’re afraid of getting angry,” Yuki says, mildly. “It’s normal to get angry.”“I threw Isuzu out of a window,” Akito reminds him.“That’s less normal,” Yuki says.
Relationships: Sohma Akito/Sohma Shigure
Series: 'cause i could never hold a perfect thing and not demolish it [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1984477
Comments: 16
Kudos: 64





	you made plans and i made problems

Akito’s temper does not go away overnight, as predicted. She fears it, at first: she can feel everytime it rises in her throat like an acrid poison, the heat spreading throughout her entire body as the world bottoms out and her field of vision narrows. She can’t hear anything over the pounding of her heart. 

Hatori teaches her to count to ten: up, and then back down. Kureno tells her, his voice static across the phone line, to breathe. Tohru tells her that it’s okay to leave a situation when she’s overwhelmed.

Shigure does none of these things, of course. He steps forward and kisses her, even when she pounds against him like she could possibly do anymore damage than she already has. He holds her wrists in his hands in an unbreakable grip and eventually her breathing stabilizes; light returns to the world and she can feel how dry her mouth is, how hard she’s shaking. 

“That’s a panic attack,” Yuki says, when he drops by for a visit. He stops by the main house more and more, these days; he says he doesn’t want to blame Akito, even if Akito privately thinks she deserves the blame, and so his hand is extended in something like friendship. “They call that a panic attack.”

“I just get angry,” Akito says, legs hanging off the edge of the engawa. She’s stolen one of Shigure’s old haori to ward off the spring chill, since he tends to wear suits, these days; she thinks it might look funny, given she’s in a dress, but the smell of the heavy linen is comfortingly familiar. 

“You’re afraid of getting angry,” Yuki says, mildly. He looks better, these days: there’s color to him, life to him. He’s never quite still, anymore; he leans forward into the breeze when it comes, his fingertips on the wood and his mouth curved into a smile. University is good for him, Akito thinks. Space is good for him. “It’s normal to get angry.”

“I threw Isuzu out of a window,” Akito reminds him.

“That’s less normal,” Yuki says. He draws one leg up to him, leans forward onto it. It doesn’t close his posture off like it might have, once; he seems open. He seems free. “I get them, sometimes.”

“Because of me,” Akito says, and looks at him.

He offers her a smile. 

“I’m afraid of the dark,” Yuki says, instead of blaming her; she still hasn’t apologized -- she can’t -- but he glosses over it as though it’s the past. “Sometimes, it’s overwhelming, and I think how pathetic it is for a grown man to be afraid of the dark. I get angry, and then everything spirals out of control.”

Akito absorbs this information, tries to compartmentalize it the way Yuki seems to be able to. Akito doesn’t know how so many people can possess the capacity for such forgiveness when none of them were ever shown it back when it mattered.

Well. It still matters, she supposes.

“I don’t want to hurt anyone anymore,” Akito says. She looks down at her feet and kicks them out. “But then sometimes I do.” She looks back at Yuki, carefully. “It isn’t as though I don’t have the capacity to do it again. There’s nothing _stopping_ me.”

“You’re stopping you,” Yuki says. 

“I’m remarkably bad at that,” Akito says, because her life is a long string of things she’s broken and then regretted, from toys to people to herself. 

“If you don’t trust yourself, why don’t you trust Shigure?” Yuki asks, and Akito stops her legs mid-swing to stare at Yuki as though he’s grown an extra head.

“ _What?_ ”

“Don’t look at me like that,” Yuki says. “ _I_ couldn’t trust Shigure like that, but the two of you are--” Yuki makes a vague hand gesture that Akito can’t quite interpret but probably accurately summarizes Akito and Shigure’s relationship. “--so you already trust him, right? So just let him hold you back when you’re angry.”

“He already does that,” Akito says.

“Then you don’t need to panic whenever you get angry,” Yuki says, like it’s the most rational thing in the world when Akito is pretty sure it isn’t. “Even if you think you can’t stop yourself, he can stop you.”

Akito blinks, because it’s true.

Shigure doesn’t have to listen to her anymore. None of them do. Akito isn’t god, she’s just the head of the household, and all of them have made it clear that they can survive without the Sohma, if they want to. Shigure can write for a living, Kyo can teach martial arts, Rin can make a living as an artist -- none of them need the funds and safety net of the family. 

It’s a little terrifying to think about, actually.

“You could get a light,” Akito says, instead, and it’s Yuki’s turn to look politely bewildered. “So it isn’t dark.”

Understanding crosses Yuki’s face, and he gets a tender look on his face that Akito knows isn’t meant for her in the slightest.

“I call Machi,” Yuki says, and looks out at the garden. “Sometimes we fall asleep on the phone together… or at least I fall asleep.”

It’s disgustingly romantic and Akito feels like she’s going to get at least two cavities just listening to it. She doesn’t make herself smile, but when she reaches inside herself she doesn’t feel that white hot anger, either. Doesn’t feel the need to track Machi down and throw _her_ out of a window.

So that’s something.

“At any rate,” Yuki says. “If you’re scared of something, and you can’t get over it… it’s alright to go around it, instead.”

“That sounds like something Tohru would say,” Akito offers.

“Honestly,” Yuki says, “it might be something she’s said to me.” This time, when he offers Akito a smile, she smiles back.

-

Akito is still bad at… talking. At communicating. For years, she could rely on the crutch of nobody being able to go against her. She didn’t have to explain herself or justify herself, and no one had to understand her.

Which went terribly, actually, so she’s trying to not do that anymore, but talking to Shigure is so _hard_ sometimes.

So she prefaces everything with: “Promise you won’t tease me if I talk to you about something.”

Shigure looks at her and tilts his head. “That’s an auspicious start to a conversation,” he says.

“Promise,” Akito says, feeling extremely childish about the demand.

“I promise,” Shigure says. He drops down to sit on the futon with her, and Akito hesitates. She tucks her bangs behind her ear to buy her time. She still isn’t used to how long her hair is getting, even if it isn’t very long at all. 

“I still get angry,” Akito says. 

“I’ve noticed,” Shigure says, his tone a little dry. 

“I’m going to take things the wrong way,” Akito says, with complete confidence, because at this point she is an Olympic gold medalist in twisting other people’s words until she can come to the worst possible conclusion. “And I’m going to get angry about it, but I don’t want -- to be angry.” 

“Are you afraid of your own temper?” Shigure asks, and Akito looks down.

“I don’t want to hurt anyone more than I already have,” Akito says. 

“You haven’t been hurting anyone,” Shigure offers. It’s meant to be reassuring, but it falls flat: Akito hasn’t been around anyone long enough to get angry at them. It’s mostly Shigure that takes the brunt of her anger whenever it pops up, which she thinks might be intentional on his part. 

“I just want you to stop me,” Akito says. She looks at him, too earnest; she can feel it, how vulnerable she is. It feels like weakness. It feels like being a girl that needs to be protected, and it makes her stomach roll because she feels pathetic. “If I ever try to hurt anyone, you can stop me.” She leans forward, puts her hand on his leg and looks at him.

“Is that what you needed to hear?” Shigure asks. He reaches forward, lets his hand drift down her side. They’ve gotten comfortable, the longer they’ve been living together; she tends to wear his shirts to bed, and he tends to wear nothing but boxers, and it works fine except that it makes her feel extremely exposed for a conversation like this. 

“I just need,” Akito says, softly, “to know that even if I can’t do it, you can.” 

Shigure smiles, and it’s a gentler thing than she would have expected from him. 

“Ah, that’s right, no teasing,” he says, and Akito doesn’t even want to _know_ what went through his mind that he declined to say. He leans forward to kiss her, instead, to draw her up close and let his hand go down to her ass. “I promise I’ll stop you if you try to hurt someone.” 

“Thank you,” Akito says.

-

The next time she gets angry, it’s at a computer, and Shigure only watches as she knocks the entire keyboard off the desk in frustration, several keys popping off as it impacts with the ground.

“That’s not a person,” Shigure offers, helpfully.

“Shut _up_ ,” Akito says, but doesn’t quite mean it; she’s starting to recognize his teasing for what it is instead of taking it as mockery, and it helps take the edge off her anger. She drops back down into her seat in frustration, because now she has computer problems _and_ a keyboard missing half the keys. 

Shigure picks the keyboard up. 

“Do you want to use mine?” he asks, gently, and Akito sighs. These days, the anger always leaves her feeling drained and embarrassed afterwards. It used to be such an all-consuming thing. It felt like it would never leave her. It felt satisfying to hurt someone, to break something, to ruin something.

These days she just thinks about the fact that she has to buy a new keyboard and feels exhausted.

“Changed my mind!” Shigure chirps, setting the keyboard down and watching Akito as she slumps in the chair. “We’re taking a break.”

“We have work to d--” 

“Mhm,” Shigure says, clearly not listening. He picks Akito up when she doesn’t stand, and she lets him, dangling like a kitten until he manages to get the right hold on her so she can sit placidly in his arms. 

“I’m not angry anymore, you don’t have to stop me,” Akito mumbles into Shigure’s shirt. 

“I’m not stopping you from being angry,” Shigure says. “I think you’re cute when you’re angry. I’m stopping you from hurting yourself.”

Akito frowns, vaguely, and tries to make this make sense in the context of breaking a keyboard. She tries to see herself objectively, and fails.

“Is it even worth asking you to explain?” Akito asks. “Also, I’m not cute when I’m angry.”

“You’re always cute,” Shigure says, with an indulgent smile when Akito just scowls. “You get angry and you break things, and I don’t care about that, because there’s more than enough money in the Sohma bank accounts to pay for whatever you could destroy.”

“Hm,” Akito says.

“But then you get angry that you’re angry, and then you get upset with yourself,” Shigure says. 

“That’s,” Akito says. “Not.”

“You’re always going to have a temper,” Shigure says, and Akito deflates, because that’s not what she wants to hear. She wants to hear that she can be different, be better, be someone more like Tohru -- not that she’ll simply be who she is regardless of her efforts to the contrary. “Haa-kun has a temper like yours, you know. Kyo-kun does, too.” 

“Kyo has never blinded one of his closest friends,” Akito says, dryly. Shigure sets her down on the engawa and then sits down next to her. 

“He threw a table at Tohru-kun, once,” Shigure offers, and Akito blinks. 

“What?” 

“He was angry at Yuki, and punched a table, and it hit her,” Shigure says. “ _My_ table, I should add.” 

Akito considers this for a long moment as she slides across the wood to lean against Shigure. He raises an arm so she can move in closer, and they both look out at the garden. The camellias aren’t that interesting, really, but it’s something to focus on.

“That’s,” Akito says, a little uncertainly. “Different?”

“It isn’t.” Shigure’s voice is firm when he says it, and even if he’s given up on being a writer (for Akito’s sake, she notes in her mind), he still has that tone of voice. Maybe he had that even before it -- like he knows so much, like he sees so much that other people don’t. That Akito doesn’t. “For Kyo-kun, he just needed a reason to pull back his anger, like stopping a punch before it landed.”

“And that reason was Tohru,” Akito finishes, turning the idea over in her head. “So what’s _my_ reason?”

“That you don’t want to hurt anyone,” Shigure says. “But you’re afraid that isn’t enough, aren’t you?”

“It never was before.” Akito looks down at her hands. “It wasn’t like I -- I never went into anything thinking, ‘I’m going to hurt them’. I’d always feel bad, afterwards, and then I’d just get angrier because I thought I was allowed to do what I wanted, so it didn’t make sense to feel guilty.”

Shigure makes a humming noise. Akito wonders how much of it he’d already guessed, how much he already knew. Shigure is always ahead of Akito when it comes to things like this, which is -- comforting, lately. He doesn’t try to use anything against her. He just holds all this knowledge and helps her figure things out, in his own way, as frustrating as it may be at times.

“And now?” 

“Now…” Akito trails off, considering it. “Now I’m not allowed to do whatever I want. No one is bound to let me.”

“So we can stop you,” Shigure says, and Akito shakes her head.

“That isn’t it. I can’t put the burden on everyone else to stop me,” Akito says, and she feels like what she’s saying is correct because Shigure is still smiling, gentle and amused, his fingers on her shoulder. “It isn’t that I can try to hurt them and be stopped, it’s that -- it’s that I can’t _try_.”

“Akito,” Shigure says. He reaches out, slips his fingers up underneath her chin until she looks at him properly. “Do you just need to push against something that won’t move?”

“ _What_?” 

“You said you wanted me to stop you,” Shigure says. There’s a look in his eye like he’s just solved a puzzle, and it makes Akito uncomfortable only because she doesn’t know what the puzzle was, what it looks like now that it’s done. “And I will. But I think what you need is more than that.”

“I don’t--” Akito starts, and then stops.

Shigure drops his hand away, but doesn’t remove his arm from where it’s wrapped around her.

“Well,” Shigure says, “when you figure it out, I’ll be here.”

Akito buries her face into Shigure’s chest and makes an annoyed growling noise at the entire situation, and Shigure only laughs.

-

“Have you considered,” Hatori says, calmly organizing his paperwork while Akito lays on the floor of his office after hours to complain about her life, “that this might just be a sex thing for him?”

Akito’s brain comes to a complete halt as she tries to reconcile the idea that Hatori is once again being dragged into her sex life and that he’s so used to it by now that he can just nonchalantly refer to the “sex thing” portion of it.

Shigure is probably partially to blame. Akito doesn’t want to know what he and Ayame dragged Hatori into back in highschool, but she’s heard tales of red light districts before. 

“What? He wants me to get angry at him and--” Akito breaks off, abruptly, flashing back to the amount of times that Shigure had, in fact, subdued her temper with sex. She can feel her cheeks burn, and she groans, faintly, dropping an arm over her face to try and block out literally everything about the conversation.

There’s the rustling of paperwork for a long moment, and then the tell-tale sound of Hatori shifting in his chair, refocusing his attention down on Akito.

“I don’t have any advice for you, as a doctor, on the situation, save to stay on your birth control,” Hatori says. “But if you’re seeking my advice as a friend, then I’m going to request that you get off the floor and have a drink with me, instead.”

It’s the way he says _friend_ more than anything, because Akito doesn’t deserve it after everything, but when she chances a look at him, there’s no old grudges held on Hatori’s face. He just stands up, offers his hand out, and when she takes it, he pulls her effortlessly up to her feet. 

It’s just as troublesome for everyone, Akito thinks, if she punishes herself when they want to move on, so she offers Hatori a small smile, instead.

“You know, I don’t really drink,” Akito says, which Hatori knows full well, and he offers her a smile that’s a little resigned.

“For conversations like this,” Hatori says, “it’s necessary.”

They go to Hatori’s house, which is fine -- Akito can see the imprint of Mayuko, now that she’s looking for it. A cardigan hanging in the entryway, books from a genre Hatori doesn't usually read, an extra set of dishes in the drying rack. Akito wonders how often she stays over. Hatori doesn’t drink like Shigure does, so he sets down a bottle of high-quality whisky and two glasses, and pours Akito’s serving first.

“Is she going to move in?” Akito asks, dodging the actual matter at hand. She watches the way Hatori sips his liquor, and tries to do the same but just pulls a face. “This tastes like a tree.” 

“It’s an acquired taste,” Hatori says. “And yes, she’s planning to. It makes more sense than my moving out and having to commute back everyday.”

Even with Akito trying to be a better person, her body hasn’t quite gotten the memo that she should stop being sick all the time. She tries to take up less of Hatori’s time, but even then, there’s two hundred other Sohma on the estate that need his attention.

“Does it bother you?” Akito asks. “To stay here, like always.”

“This was one of the choices I made for myself,” Hatori says. “I know everyone assumed that I would become a doctor because my father was, and that I would stay here because the family needed me, but it wasn’t a decision I allowed anyone else to make for me.”

Akito thinks that over for a moment. She takes another sip of the alcohol. It still tastes like trees, and she’s fairly certain she isn’t savoring it as much as she should be, but the more she drinks the warmer she feels. 

“It’s hard to understand,” Akito says, a little softer than she intends to, “why anyone would stay, after everything -- but it’s because it isn’t just about me, isn’t it?” She’s not the center of the universe. She isn’t “god”. She’s the family head in an era that’s quickly moving away from things like clan estates and permission for marriage, and she wonders how long she’ll be relevant. 

“I would have stayed even without you,” Hatori says, gently, “but I don’t want you to think that you’re unimportant to me. The things that have happen -- you aren’t the only one to blame, and you shouldn’t try to carry that burden alone.”

Akito drains her cup in one single shot, the scent of a pine tree in her nose, and then coughs hard enough that she’s worried she’s going to break a rib. Ah, like licking a pine tree in winter. 

“I want to go back to talking about my sex life,” Akito says. “That was actually less awkward than this.”

Hatori lets out a chuckle, and Akito, frankly, can’t remember the last time she heard him laugh, so she basks in the quality of it for a long moment, even if it seems like it’s coming as a direct result of her own embarrassment. 

“Then,” Hatori says, letting the previous subject drop, because Hatori is a polite and forgiving person, “know that we’re only having this conversation because I know it would be impossible to have with Shigure.”

“Most things are impossible with Shigure,” Akito says, and uses a finger to gently slide her cup back over to Hatori. He refills it, but with considerably less liquid than the previous cup; Akito accepts this, because Hatori is undoubtedly a better judge of her alcohol intake than she is.

“He likes to let people come to their own conclusions,” Hatori says. “He’s the sort of person who pushes until he meets resistance, and then he keeps going.”

“Is that what that is,” Akito says, and thinks of the sheer amount of times Shigure has said the worst possible thing to people. She doesn’t know how he’s avoided getting punched in the face, honestly. 

“I think,” Hatori says, “from knowing him so long, that he’s suggesting you take your anger out on him.”

Akito stares down at her whisky and considers this for a long moment.

“We’ve,” Akito says, carefully, the alcohol flush helping disguise her embarrassment, “done that, before. But I thought -- it would be bad, to do now. I’m supposed to be less angry, now.”

“You _are_ less angry,” Hatori says. “It isn’t bad to let your anger out in healthy channels, and I don’t think this would be… _un_ healthy.”

Akito tries to sort it out in her head. 

“Angry sex,” Akito says, “is… good?”

“If you’re both on the same page,” Hatori says, “then yes.”

“Hatori, I don’t even know what book he’s reading.” 

“Then ask him,” Hatori says. “Directly. He won’t lie to you, at least.”

Akito groans, knocks back the rest of the drink and then pushes the cup to the side so she can pillow her head onto the table with her arms. 

“Thanks,” she says, finally, because she can’t think of anything else to say. 

Hatori shifts, and then reaches out; he ruffles her hair, like he did when they were younger, like he did before everything fell apart. 

“You’re welcome,” he offers, in return, but there’s that truce again, that careful offer: that Akito can continue to come to him, if she needs; that Hatori doesn’t find her to be a burden or a punishment.

Akito’s starting to accept that some people genuinely like her, for whatever -- strange -- reason, even if it feels unreal after all this time.

-

Hatori doesn’t have to carry Akito home, but he does call Shigure to come get her. Akito reflects, briefly, on the impropriety of being carried home by your boyfriend-slash-administrative-assistant, but Shigure’s arms are warm and strong, and if she focuses on the metal of his shirt button the world doesn’t spin as badly.

“Haa-san, you got her drunk?” Shigure chastises. Hatori, for his part, has taken off his tie and done little else to be affected by the alcohol. “You’re not trying to take advantage of--”

“Shut up,” Hatori and Akito say, in unison, and Shigure laughs so hard his grip on Akito shifts to become more secure.

“We were talking,” Akito mumbles. 

“Her tolerance is less than I expected,” Hatori says. 

“If you’re going by Mayu-chan standards, then she can drink Akito under the table,” Shigure says.

“It tasted like a tree,” Akito says, her arms around Shigure’s neck. 

“That was the expensive alcohol,” Shigure tells her, and Akito makes a vague noise in response, because most of the things Hatori owns are expensive. 

“I wasn’t judging by Mayu standards,” Hatori says. “She’s nearly twenty centimeters taller than Akito.”

“I never thought you’d be the one to go rogue and get her drunk,” Shigure says, and Akito vaguely feels like she should tell them to stop talking about her like she isn’t there, but she also doesn’t care enough. It’s nice, to be an observer: to hear the way they interact. The way they talk to each other, the way they talk about Hatori’s girlfriend. Akito wonders if she’ll ever find things to be that easy, if she’ll ever be able to build friendships and relationships like that. 

It seems more possible now than it did before.

“Better it be someone trustworthy,” Hatori says.

“Haa-san, are you saying that I’m not trustworthy? I’m _wounded_.”

“You’d have let her keep drinking until she was sick,” Hatori says, “so you had an excuse to take care of her.”

Akito doesn’t want to be sick, but she _does_ like when Shigure takes care of her, so she supposes that’s a fair assessment on the part of all concerned parties.

“She’s cute when she’s whining,” Shigure says, and Akito makes a vague noise of disapproval. “Yes, yes, honey, I know, you don’t think so.” Akito raises her hand and then lets it fall back against Shigure in her best imitation of a punch, but her best imitation lacks, you know, anything remotely resembling an actual punch. 

“See?” Shigure says, and Akito can practically _hear_ Hatori rolling his eyes. 

“Make sure she has something to drink before bed,” Hatori says, and Akito is aware that they’re suddenly home. She turns her face further into Shigure so she doesn’t have to risk seeing the faces of the maids, because she can still hear their judgement replaying in her head -- _I liked him better the other way_. 

Well, no one else did! 

“Of course, of course,” Shigure says, easily. “I’ll be gentle with her, Haa-san!”

“See that you are,” Hatori says, no trace of giving in to Shigure’s jokes in his voice.

“What have you _done_ to Akito-san?” is the first thing Akito hears when Shigure’s footsteps hit the familiar floor of the house, and Akito wishes she could sink far enough into Shigure that she wouldn’t have to hear anything.

“She wasn’t feeling well,” Shigure lies, deftly. “She went to see Hatori about it.”

Akito knows she must smell like alcohol, but the maid doesn’t comment on it, and Shigure brushes his way through any further argumentation, takes her into her house proper. The house she’s started to keep as hers, specifically: there’s scheduled times for the maids to come in, and room for Shigure’s things. It’s starting to resemble a home, even if the maids complain about the sheer amount of books that Shigure has brought along with himself.

Shigure finally sets her down, and Akito sits up a little begrudgingly. She doesn’t want to be detached from Shigure but she wants even less to go to sleep with her bra on.

“Here,” Shigure says, setting down a cup of water next to her. “Do you need help?”

“I’m not that drunk,” Akito says, and she’s. _Pretty_ sure she isn’t actually that drunk. She peels off her sweater and manages to unhook her bra on the second try, which is actually pretty good even for her when she’s stone cold sober, given she lacks the twenty years of experience most girls have. Their clothing goes into a pile in the corner of the room even on a good night, and Shigure starts to stand to grab a shirt to sleep in when Akito catches him by the hand.

“Just give me that,” Akito says, and holds her hand out. 

“I’ve been wearing that all day,” Shigure says, but lets her take his shirt, pull it over her head.

“You were wearing it to do a desk job,” Akito says, with a huff. It’s not like it smells; it’s not like he’s gross. Akito likes how Shigure smells, at any rate. “Don’t act like you don’t think this is cute, too.”

“Ah, you’re catching on!” Shigure says. “Drink your water.”

Akito drinks her water. Not all of it, but she downs half the glass, then spreads her legs out underneath the blanket. 

“Am I going to regret this in the morning?” Akito asks.

“You might have a headache,” Shigure says. “But you didn’t drink very much.”

Akito makes a noise, leaning over onto Shigure. She keeps leaning until she’s across his legs, and he reaches down, tucking her hair back and then letting his hand drift up and down her spine. “I was talking to Hatori about you,” she says, finally.

“Oh?” Shigure says, and nothing else.

“You have to explain things to me,” Akito says. “If you wait for me to realize things, you’ll wait forever. You’ve been waiting long enough.”

Shigure’s hand doesn’t stop, a comforting up-down-up-down on her spine that makes it easier to keep talking. It’s easier to focus on that, to close her eyes and focusing on the beating of her own heart, on his touch.

“I’m not waiting anymore,” Shigure says.

Akito opens her mouth to respond, but she doesn’t quite get there, and she hears Shigure laugh, softly, sounding like he’s a million miles away.

-

Akito doesn’t wake up with a headache, but she does oversleep practically until lunch, which is a sin she can blame mostly on Shigure. When she finally makes it up, she just sits at the table without bothering to put on pants, and Shigure slides her leftovers from breakfast for her to dutifully pick at. She’s started drinking coffee, lately, which seems to offend half the Sohma maids on a moral level, but Shigure makes sure she has a cup and she feels more human after the caffeine starts to kick in.

“Did I fall asleep on you?” Akito asks. 

“You did. It was like old times,” Shigure says. Akito sets her chopsticks down, leaning onto the table in a flagrant disregard for etiquette. 

“There was,” Akito says, carefully, “a lot you liked about me, even then, wasn’t there?”

Shigure looks at her. She can see the decision as it crosses his face: whether he should make light of the situation or be serious, and he favors seriousness more often when it’s just the two of them. 

“I told you that I’ve always loved you,” Shigure says. “I was just waiting for you to join the rest of us.”

Akito considers this for a long moment. It’s hard to imagine, that anyone could love her now, but much less then, when she was nothing but uncontrolled violence, unable to do anything but scream.

“I can’t see the things worth loving,” Akito says, finally. “So you have to-- you have to tell me. If you want me to push back at you, if you want me to --”

“I want you to do it because you want to do it,” Shigure says, and Akito slams her hand down on the table hard enough to rattle her chopsticks off the holder.

“That’s not it! You can’t just say that! It’s always about what I want,” Akito says, too loud, all in one breath. There’s that familiar anger in her lungs, burning too hot, and she wonders if she’ll regret this in an hour, in a day. “You have to tell me what you want, or I won’t know! I won’t get it!” 

Shigure moves, then; catches her hand in his own, moves forward until he’s next to her instead of across from her in the blink of an eye.

“What do you think I want?” Shigure asks, and Akito doesn’t move. “Akito.”

“I don’t…” Akito starts, and then stops. “Do you want me to get mad at you?”

“If you’re going to get angry, then I want it to be at me,” Shigure says. “If you’re going to cry, I want to be the one to see it. If you’re going to hurt anyone, then I want it to be me. You don’t have to hide anything from me, Akito.”

Akito lets out a laugh, startled and ugly. 

“I don’t understand you,” Akito says, but she leans forward anyway, breaks her hand out of Shigure’s grasp and reaches up. She puts her hands on his cheeks, drags her nails across the line of his chin, and knows with complete certainty that she could hurt him as hard as she could and he would let her.

“You will,” Shigure says. “You’re just making up for lost time.”

“Did you just,” Akito says, “ _really_ like having sex with me when I was angry?”

“Oh, I really liked that,” Shigure says, with the confidence she’d expect. “But it’s as I said. You need something to push back against that won’t leave, don’t you? I told you if you chose me, you’d never get rid of me, and you won’t.”

“Hm,” Akito says, because that’s a good thing, but given how the conversation has been going she wonders about-- no, it’s a good thing. She doesn’t want Shigure to leave. She wants to trust that he’ll always be there, no matter what she does.

“Your temper isn’t going away overnight, and it’s not going to get any better if you’re constantly scared you’re going to get angry,” Shigure says. “So why don’t you just take it out on me?”

“This _is_ a sex thing,” Akito says, and pitches her head forward onto Shigure’s chest. 

“It’s kind of a sex thing,” Shigure says, and Akito grabs his shirt and contemplates the merits of strangling him. The Sohma estate is pretty big. They’d never find the body. “But it isn’t just that. You can’t live your life scared of getting annoyed. You’ll just snap even worse.”

“Healthy coping mechanisms,” Akito says, vaguely.

“Ah, that’s what you were talking to Haa-san about!” Shigure looks delighted. “I’m glad he agrees.”

“Is strangling you a healthy coping mechanism?” Akito says. 

“So, let me teach you about ‘safe words’--”

Akito shoves him backwards and tries to smother him with a blanket insead. It doesn’t work.

-

It figures that the next time Akito gets angry Shigure wouldn’t be there.

It’s a business meeting. It’s just a business meeting. Except the man she’s meeting is one Akito has never liked, and he spends the entire meeting talking not about business but about how he’d been so certain Akito was a boy and now that he realizes how beautiful she is won’t she consider marrying his son, and blah blah blah, and every sentence grates on Akito more and more and more. 

It feeds around into a loop: she didn’t have to deal with this man previously because she had Kureno, but Kureno is gone and Shigure was busy, and that left her to clean up her own messes. She hates it, and she hates this man, and she hates every second of the business deal that she shouldn’t have to do at all because it’s stupid that she’s in charge of every little thing of the family when there’s two hundred other grown adults who could be helping with this,

At any rate, she shatters the mirror in the bathroom of the restaurant.

“I slipped,” she says, when two workers rush in and look concerned, and despite the fact that it all involves a chaotic mess of phone calls, she’s still annoyed enough when Hatori gets there that he sighs.

“Let me see,” Hatori says, and Akito offers out her hand. It’s not bad, just one particularly nasty cut. They’d gotten the glass out first thing, and then Akito had promptly refused to let anyone else see it until Hatori got there -- mainly because she didn’t think she was capable of continuing to speak politely to literally anyone. 

“Can you bandage it in the car?” Akito asks, and it’s as close to begging for escape as she’s willing to get. 

“I’ll take care of things,” Hatori says, and Akito feels grateful even through the muddle of negative emotions. “Go to the car.”

Akito does. Her shirt is absolutely ruined, so she keeps her hand cradled against it and watches as Hatori goes to smooth things over. Her lie is transparent -- she obviously didn’t fall -- but the restaurant doesn’t want any trouble, and Hatori is polite and handsome, so everything is handled in a way where no one needs to admit blame and everyone is still financially secure. 

Hatori comes back, and Akito offers her hand out again. 

“You can say it was stupid,” Akito says.

“I’m not going to,” Hatori says, and Akito thinks that might actually be worse. He disinfects her hand, wraps it up. “You’re going to need to take a few days off. Don’t type or write with it.”

Akito sighs. 

“I’m not going to tell you it was stupid, because you knew that when you did it,” Hatori says. “The fact that you did it anyway means you felt like there wasn’t anything else you could do. Reacting poorly when you feel trapped isn’t stupid.”

Akito stares at him for a long moment as she takes her hand back. Hatori takes his jacket off, wraps it around her so she looks a little less like a horror movie villain. Not that it matters much, because the car is already taking off back to the estate.

“I’m sure there’s something else I could have done,” Akito murmurs.

“Breaking a mirror wasn’t your only option,” Hatori says, “but you felt like it was, didn’t you?” 

“I just,” Akito says. She glances at Hatori and she isn’t sure why: this is hardly the most awkward conversation they’ve had. It just feels like it’s even more of a weakness than usual; it feels like she’s even more pathetic. “I just wanted everything to… stop.”

Hatori is quiet for a long moment. “Did it stop?”

“Some,” Akito says. “It got quieter.” 

“What got quieter?”

Akito looks at Hatori, and then looks back out the window. “Would I sound crazy if I said it was everything in my head?”

“No,” Hatori says, “you’d just sound like someone with a normal reaction to trauma.” 

“What,” Akito says. “What trauma have _I_ had? I’m the one inflicting trauma on everyone else.”

Hatori stares at her. Genuinely stares, like he’s been caught so off guard that he doesn’t know how to respond.

“You,” Hatori says, “don’t think you’ve…?” He trails off, and then shakes his head. “That explains a lot.”

“Please explain,” Akito says, flatly, “because I already broke a mirror and I don’t want the car to be next.”

“Akito,” Hatori says, and at least he isn’t being gentle with her, isn’t parrying his words to protect her. “You were forcibly rejected by your mother, raised as a boy, with your self-worth constantly challenged and devalued. Do you think that sort of upbringing wouldn’t have lasting repercussions?”

“Uh,” Akito says, which is one of the least intelligent things she’s said in at least a week. “I don’t know how to answer that.”

“What you did to Yuki,” Hatori says, instead, “was not dissimilar to what was done to you.”

Akito stares at the car seat. It’s pretty ugly, actually. 

“Huh,” Akito says, because she can’t think of anything else to say.

-

“Hatori says I’m traumatized because you slept with my mother,” Akito tells Shigure, when he comes in. She’s propped up in the corner, reading a book with her good hand. Truthfully, “reading” is a strong word for what she’s doing; she’s been scanning the pages without actually taking anything in for at least half an hour.

“That’s not what he said,” Shigure says, “but I _am_ sorry about all that.”

“Did he already talk to you?” Akito asks. 

“Yes,” Shigure says. He drops down next to her, and she sets the book down. Shigure takes her bandaged hand in his, rubs his fingers over the white gauze. “Did it hurt?”

“Not really,” Akito says. She looks away, out towards the gardens; Shigure presses down on the bandage until it shoots a burst of pain through her nerves and forces her attention back on him.

“I was wrong,” Shigure says, sounding almost amused. “It’s not just that you want to push back against something.”

Akito is tired of asking people -- especially Shigure -- what the actual fuck they’re talking about, so she just fixes him with an unimpressed glare instead. Shigure only smiles, lacing their fingers together gently.

“Do you want everyone else to punish you?” Shigure asks. Akito jerks back, but his grip on her hand and the wall behind her doesn’t give her much room to run. 

“I’m not,” Akito starts, but it’s a lie that she can’t finish.

“If they hurt you like you hurt them, it might feel like you’re forgiven,” Shigure says. “Is that it?”

“I know it doesn’t work that way,” Akito says, but it doesn’t matter what she knows. She knows Hatori will never hurt her; Kureno will never hurt her. It doesn’t even _occur_ to them, because they’re good people, they’re not-- 

Akito inhales sharply as the situation becomes transparent before her. She can see right through it, finally, see straight into what Shigure has been getting at.

“Before,” Akito says, softly, “I thought -- you were so mean. That I would get so angry, and you were never kind to me.” 

Shigure is quiet, and Akito sighs, leans her head backwards against the wood.

“I spent so long thinking I was allowed to hurt people if I wanted,” Akito says, “and then I learned that you shouldn’t hurt people, and now it turns out you can hurt people but only when they want it? And that sometimes we want it because --” Akito gestures, vaguely, with her free hand. “I don’t know, trauma?”

“It’s a convenient excuse,” Shigure says. He brings her bandaged hand up, kisses the top of it, and even though they’ve been living together for awhile, now, it still makes Akito’s stomach roll like it’s the first time he told her he loved her. “Some people are simply designed differently.”

“Hm,” Akito says. She considers her options. Considers the way she felt when the mirror exploded underneath her hand; compares it to the way she felt when Hatori was on his knees, blood rolling down his face from a ruined eye. 

“Fine,” Akito says, after a moment, and fixes Shigure with a stare. “Teach me about safe words.”

Shigure does.

-

Ayame and Mine drop by, which is fine, Akito tells herself; it’s absolutely fine. Shigure can have friends, even loud, overwhelming ones, and that’s healthy and normal and she should not hide in her office.

She hides in her office.

Mine is the one who opens the door, eventually; she’s… dressed down, as Akito understands it, because she’s wearing something that Akito would classify as the general concept of “normal clothing” instead of a maid outfit.

“Was he too much?” Mine asks, from the doorway. 

“I’m just not used to that level of… um.” Akito trails off, then waves Mine inside. Mine goes, sits down in Shigure’s chair like she’s reclaiming an entire mountain. 

“It’s okay, it’s okay! Most people aren’t,” Mine says, with a laugh. “It’s just -- they’re really good friends, you know? So I’d like it if we could be friends.”

It’s so _forward_. 

“That’s,” Akito says, extremely awkwardly. “Fine.”

Mine laughs. Not meanly, which is good, because Akito is already gripping her pencil too tight. “I probably already know more about you than you’re comfortable with,” Mine says, and Akito wonders how much has been relayed to her via an inconvenient game of telephone from Shigure and Ayame. “But, you know, I’m great as a friend. I’ve got good advice, great fashion sense, and I can teach you how to use makeup to cover up bruises.”

“To cover,” Akito echoes, vaguely, and Mine gives a meaningful look at Akito’s wrists. Akito turns bright red, tugging her sleeves down and mentally running through the limited amount of people she’d seen over the course of the day. 

“Don’t worry, don’t worry! That kind of thing, I’m into it too,” Mine says, and Akito wonders how someone can be so casual about admitting that they’re into the kind of sex that would make Kureno have an actual, honest to god stroke. “The boys, they don’t have to deal with things like we do, so I thought…?”

Akito doesn’t respond, for a long moment. She thinks it over: Mine is an outsider, but she knows about the curse. Akito is sure of that, even if she’s never officially approved or allowed it. That means that Mine knows what Akito has done, but still exists in a sphere outside of it: never touched directly by the curse, never touched by Akito.

Akito has never had a friend outside of the family. 

“I didn’t think it was the kind of thing people talked about,” Akito says.

“Depends on the person,” Mine says. “There’s whole clubs dedicated to it, you know -- bondage and shibari and S&M, all that stuff!”

“I don’t know what any of those words mean,” Akito says, and she especially doesn’t know what they mean in that configuration.

“Wanna learn?” Mine asks, with a glint in her eye that makes Akito feel vaguely uneasy. “It’s great stress relief. It’s not exactly normal, but you know, so long as everyone’s happy, who cares about things like that?”

And Akito -- doesn’t. She doesn’t care. She’s never cared in her life about what people think of her, outside of the juunishi. The curse is broken, but those bonds aren’t gone, so why should she care what’s normal and what isn’t, what’s good and what’s wrong in the eyes of anyone else? 

If she and Shigure are on the same page… she understands now, what Hatori had meant. 

“I don’t even know how to apply foundation,” Akito says, backtracking in the conversation and watching Mine follow it flawlessly.

“I’m the kind of girl that likes a challenge,” Mine says. 

“Then we _can_ be friends,” Akito says, “because I’m very challenging.” 

“ _Great_ ,” Mine says, and Akito can’t help but laugh.

**Author's Note:**

> this is a 7k word discussion of trauma and kink without ever actually having any porn in it, because this fic got away from me, but make no mistake. there will be porn in this series eventually. just... not today. this fic was originally meant to be shibari pwp, but Things Happened And I Really Liked All The Dialogue. 
> 
> you can find me on twitter @warsfeils!


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